Jordan’s Wadi Rum vast, echoing and God-like

Camels in Wadi Rum.
Camels in Wadi Rum. Joanne Blain photoIf you want a taste of Bedouin culture, ride a camel through the desert of Wadi Rum.

Wadi Rum Panorama.thinkstock.com
/ Getty Images/iStockphoto

The Monastery in Petra.thinkstock.com
/ Getty Images/iStockphoto

Jerash Temple of Artemis.Joanne Blain photo

Wadi Rum desert, Jordan. Joanne Blain photoJoanne Blain

Petra is a historical and archeological city in southern Jordan popular with tourists. To experience the life of the nomadic Bedouins one has to journey to the Wadi Rum a few hours away.thinkstock.com
/ Getty Images/iStockphoto

The jeeps that had brought us to the middle of the desert had shut off their engines. One by one, the dozen people who had gotten out to take photos of the setting sun stopped clicking their shutters and fell silent. We were in Wadi Rum, Jordan, the stomping grounds of Lawrence of Arabia and the nomadic Bedouins he mustered into an army to defeat the Turks occupying the port city of Aqaba. We were surrounded by clay-coloured sand, monolithic cliffs, a cerulean sky streaked with wispy orange clouds and nothing else.

We didn’t need words to describe it because Lawrence himself already found the perfect ones: “Vast, echoing and God-like.”

Wadi Rum has the power to awe even the most jaded traveller, and along with the 2,000-year-old sculpted sandstone cliffs of Petra, it’s one of the most iconic images of this Middle Eastern country wedged between Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

That geographical fact is enough to scare many would-be visitors away from Jordan these days, and the country’s tourism industry is feeling the pain. Tourists stayed away in droves in 2011 and 2012 as the Arab Spring protests rocked its neighbours, even though little of the discord and violence spilled over into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, as it’s officially known.

Although the Syrian crisis is still unresolved, there are signs tourists are trickling back into Jordan, long recognized as one of the most peaceful and progressive countries in the Middle East and one of the best for women’s rights. So if you’re intrigued by the idea of walking in Lawrence’s footsteps, get it while the getting’s good. The crowds won’t stay away forever.

That’s because Jordan offers a bit of everything a visitor could ask for — modern cities and untouristy small towns, deserts and hot springs, seaside resort hotels and remote eco-lodges, and sites of architectural, historical and biblical importance dating back thousands of years. Throw in great food, temperate weather most of the year and locals who genuinely welcome visitors and Jordan is overdue for a tourism resurgence.

Most international flights land in Amman, Jordan’s capital and the country’s largest city with a population nearing three million. Built over thousands of years on seven hills, it has a higgledy-piggledy layout and no rapid-transit system, which makes getting around a challenge for visitors.

But rewards like the old souk (public market) in central Jordan, where heaping displays of olives, spices and pomegranates sit near shops selling everything from baby clothes to plumbing parts, and the competing exhortations of the merchants contribute to the pleasant mayhem.

Buy a bag of dates or a sack of sage and spice tea, then grab an outdoor table for lunch at the nearby Hashem restaurant.

It’s popular with locals because you can stuff yourself with hummus, falafel, fattoush (vegetable and bread salad), fuul (fava bean dip) and pita bread, washed down with glasses of sweet mint tea, for about the price of a grandee latte back home.

You can get a better sense of the city’s antiquity at the Citadel, which sits on one of Amman’s hills and offers a commanding view of the city as well as a snapshot of ancient history in its Roman and Byzantine ruins. And the newly opened Jordan Museum is home to some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as other artifacts dating back thousands of years.

But to truly appreciate Jordan’s historical significance, you have to get out of Amman. About 50 kilometres north of the city is Jerash, home to impressive Greco-Roman ruins, including a spectacular column-lined forum that wasn’t discovered until the 1970s.

Nothing, however, can top Petra, the Nabatean city hand-carved out of rock more than 2,000 years ago. A narrow passageway lined with sheer cliffs, called the Siq, is what protected the city from invaders; now it provides a dramatic prelude to your first view of the Treasury, a looming facade of rose-red sandstone thought to be an ancient tomb to honour the importance of the city’s wealthiest and most exalted residents.

Ignore the locals hawking camel and donkey rides, and take the time to wander through the rest of the vast archeological site, where local Bedouins lived in caves until the mid-1980s, when they were resettled in a nearby town. You could easily spend two or three days walking through Petra and learning the history and significance of all of its monuments, but there’s so much more to Jordan.

For religious pilgrims, there’s Mount Nebo, where Moses is said to have seen the promised land, and Bethany Beyond the Jordan, where religious scholars believe John baptized Jesus.

For those who want a taste of Bedouin culture, you can enjoy a zarb dinner (meat and vegetables cooked in a fire pit), sleep in a traditional Bedouin woven tent and get up before dawn to ride a camel through the desert of Wadi Rum.

Or stay at Feynan Ecolodge in the Dana Biosphere Reserve, which is still home to many Bedouin families. The comfortable 26-room lodge has almost no electricity (what there is is solar-generated), no phones and no TVs, but it does offer daily activities that include visiting a Bedouin family at their camp to enjoy coffee and bread made in front of you. Don’t be surprised, though, if your Bedouin host pauses while roasting coffee beans over an open fire to answer his cellphone.

In a country with so much desert and so little water, the Evason Ma’in Hot Springs resort near the Dead Sea is a pleasant surprise. Sit in a natural pool fed by a warm mineral-rich waterfall, then retire to one of the hotel’s outdoor lounges for a drink and a few puffs on a hookah filled with shisha (flavoured tobacco) — it’s just about guaranteed to cure any case of travel weariness.

Don’t even think of visiting Jordan without spending at least a day at the Dead Sea, which is about 30 per cent salt, devoid of sea life and the lowest place on Earth (I’m still trying to figure out how a sea can be more than 400 metres below sea level). Slather yourself with mineral-rich, skin-softening mud (most hotels have a vat of it by the beach) before you wade into the water. I don’t know why the beaches have lifeguards because you couldn’t drown if you tried — all that salt means you bob around like a cork.

At Jordan’s southern tip is the Red Sea, which isn’t dead (or red either, for that matter). Take a half-day catamaran trip from the harbour in Aqaba, strap on a snorkel and flippers and you’ll find coral reefs teeming with multicoloured fish. From the boat deck, you’ll have views of three other countries: Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, all of which border the sea.

Desert and water, history and culture, great food and hospitality, and no hordes of tourists to contend with — all reasons to think about seeing Jordan while many other travellers are staying away. If you wait awhile and they’re back in droves, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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